The Ford F-150 Diesel Is Fantastic, But Is It Too Late?

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A lifetime in the car business, first engineering, now communicating

2018 Ford F-150 dieselSam Abuelsamid

Having a commercially successful product requires many factors to come together. First, the product has to be good enough to meet customer needs. It needs to priced right. It also needs to come to market at the right time. When General Motors launched its Two-Mode Hybrid pickups and SUVs a decade ago, they completely missed on two of those criteria and partially missed on capability. Ford is now launching the first ever diesel powered version of the F-150 and the market will soon tell us if it does any better.

When GM launched its hybrid trucks, fuel prices were on the rise. The rationale was that applying electrification would actually save more fuel when applied to these thirsty beasts than it would for a small vehicle that was already relatively efficient. While that made sense, the hybrid system was costly and it arrived just as the combination of high fuel prices and the collapsing housing market killed demand for trucks and utilities. Add in that despite GM’s efforts to maintain as much towing and payload capability as possible, the hybrids still fell short of conventional gasoline-fueled variants.

Ford took a different tack with its EcoBoost strategy. While the fuel economy improvement from the original 3.5-liter twin-turbo V6 was less than what GM achieved, the cost was much lower and it had enough power and torque to achieve the highest towing and payload in the F-150 range. Perhaps most importantly, it hit the market as sales were just starting to pick up in the wake of the financial melt-down. The EcoBoost has been on a tear ever since and the two different turbo V6s now offered in the F-150 account for 70% of sales.

All of this brings us to the latest addition to the F-150 lineup, a new to Ford trucks 3.0-liter diesel V6. The original 2.7-liter version of the Lion V6 was developed through a joint venture with PSA and has been used since 2004 in a variety of Ford, Jaguar, Land Rover, Peugeot and Citroen vehicles. It finally came to North America in late 2015 under the hood of several Range Rover models.

When Ford decided to install the Lion in the F-150, they did another round of updates that brought output to 250-hp and 440 lb-ft of torque. The common rail fuel injection system was bumped from 1,800 BAR to 2,000 BAR. In order to simplify assembly on F-150 assembly lines, the alternator and air conditioning compressor swapped sides to match the position on the rest of the truck lineup and enable common wiring harnesses. In the F-150, it is also paired for the first time with the new 10-speed automatic transmission that Ford developed with General Motors.

The timing of the development of the diesel F-150 happens to coincide with increased scrutiny of diesel emissions globally. While diesel engines are generally more efficient than gasoline engines of comparable output, they do have issues with emissions of NOx and particulate matter which require costly aftertreatment systems to mitigate. That added scrutiny can be attributed to the 2015 revelation that Volkswagen Group had been cheating on how it applied those systems. Since the announcement of the diesel F-150 last December, Ford has emphasized that it has gone to great lengths to make sure that its diesel engines are fully compliant with all regulations and run clean under all conditions not just when being tested.

The ample torque produced by a diesel makes it very well suited to applications such as towing and hauling heavy payloads. The F-150 with the diesel engine is rated at up to 11,400-pounds of towing capacity or payloads up to 2,020-pounds. However, a check of the towing specifications for the F-150 reveal that a crew-cab, four-wheel drive with the heavy duty towing package can actually pull 13,000-pounds or haul up to 3,000-pounds with the 3.5-liter EcoBoost.

2018 Ford F-150 dieselSam Abuelsamid

So why bother with the diesel? While customers have been particularly fond of the 2.7-liter and 3.5-liter EcoBoost V6 engines, they have also discovered the dirty little secret of these engines. While they deliver surprisingly good fuel economy when driven with a light load, hard acceleration or heavy towing makes the real-world efficiency drop significantly.

According to Ford, about three-quarters of F-150 owners use their trucks to tow. But not all F-150 owners are alike. Most truck owners only tow a few times a year, perhaps to take the boat to the lake in the spring and pull it out in the fall or to pull a travel trailer for a family vacation. For them the drop in fuel efficiency with a gas engine is not such a big problem.

For those that haul a trailer far more frequently such as landscapers pulling an equipment trailer or horse owners going to competitions every weekend, fuel efficiency becomes a bigger factor. That’s where a diesel is generally the best solution.

We had the opportunity evaluate the diesel F-150 in a variety of scenarios near Denver to see how it performs. Given the importance of towing to diesel pickup buyers, we went for a drive in a Super Crew with a 6,500-pound boat latched to the rear bumper. Despite the load, pulling the boat up a variety of grades proved pretty effortless for the 440 lb-ft of torque. With the tow-haul mode enabled, tapping the brake while going down a long grade will trigger downshifts and cause the transmission to hold those lower gears for more engine braking, It’s a handy feature to have especially on trucks with a column shifter.

For trailers with electric braking, Ford offers full trailer brake control that also works with the trailer sway control system. When a towing a trailer in windy conditions, it can sometimes start to sway back and forth in a way that can be difficult for the driver to recover manually. Sway control uses the stability control system to alternately apply the truck’s brakes to dampen the trailer motions and bring it back in line. When electric trailer brakes are available, they are also utilized.

We didn’t notice any swaying during our drive loop and didn’t feel like trying to induce it, so the wind either wasn’t catching the boat or the system was working. The F-150 also features Ford’s trailer backup assistance that uses the rear camera to help drivers expertly back up the truck using a knob on the center console to steer. Just twist the knob to where you want to go, and the truck does the steering perfectly.

2018 Ford F-150 dieselSam Abuelsamid

Next up was the off-road course. Snow and sleet the prior two days meant that we had a nice muddy course to navigate through but the F-150 handled it with aplomb. An F-150 is too physically large to go into serious rock crawling domains that are limited to smaller SUVs like a Jeep Wrangler. However, like most modern four-wheel-drive trucks and utilities with real off-road pretensions, the F-150 has features like hill descent control and an available low-range four wheel drive. There’s plenty of wheel articulation and ground clearance for crawling over most logs and the overhangs are short enough for some pretty substantial approach and departure angles. The F-150 had no problem climbing and descending 30% dirt grades on the factory all-terrain tires. The surround view camera system also lets you see rocks and other objects in tight spaces to minimize the chances of scraping off the paint.

2018 Ford F-150 dieselSam Abuelsamid

Finally, it wouldn’t be a diesel adventure without a fuel economy challenge. We had a nine-mile loop that included a short bit of highway, a bunch of urban driving with traffic lights that always seemed to turn red just as you would hope to coast through an intersection and plenty of elevation change. On my first time around the loop, I managed to squeeze out 34.1 mpg without spending too much time way below posted speed limits and annoying other road users.

Once familiarized with the route, I tried a couple more times to see what I could achieve. Using techniques that I won’t elaborate on or even recommend to any normal drivers I managed to keep inching up the mileage until I peaked at 38.9 mpg. I think professional hyper-miler Wayne Gerdes would have been pleased. That said, I think the 30 mpg EPA highway rating and 25 mpg combined on two-wheel drive trucks with the 3.31:1 rear axle ratio is probably very achievable for most typical drivers. The more common four-wheel-drive configurations are rated at 20 mpg city, 22 mpg combined and 25 mpg highway which should also be quite realistic.

Depending on what trim level you are adding the diesel too, the price premium ranges from $2,400 to $4,000 which isn’t cheap. But if you are the target customer that tows a lot, you may well recover that premium pretty quickly in fuel savings compared to one of the EcoBoost engines. After driving the F-150 diesel, it certainly seems like there is still a place for this engine. At least until the hybrid shows up in a couple of years.

I’ve spent my entire adult life working in and around the automotive industry. After earning a mechanical engineering degree from GMI I spent the next 17 years working on electronic control systems that help cars stop, go and change direction before I drove away to write ab...